Please,
let me be quiet.
I will walk around,
baking pies.
I have to say, I laughed pretty hard after writing this one. The contrast between the melodrama of the first half and the absurdity of the second is definitely supposed to be funny.
But I had the privilege--and it was a wonderful experience--of listening some peers review the poem and consider it for publication in Brown's undergraduate arts journal, Clerestory. It was anonymous, so I basically got to hide and hear what they thought.
I was blown away by their ability to find meanings in it. Someone suggested, for example, that it was about the Jewish holiday of atonement, which apparently involves food.
I think (as much as I hate to paraphrase poetry) I originally wrote it to say, "I'm sorry, but I don't want to talk right now. The domestic actions I'm doing (both directed and flighty) are keeping me busy and taking the place of normal communication. I need you to read them that way." The reason I think the poem says this effectively is because it really doesn't say it. It's terse, abrupt and uncommunicative--very much my mood at the time.
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